


Through White Cloud

by skywaterblue



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Apocalypse, F/M, Smut, ap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-20
Updated: 2009-11-20
Packaged: 2017-10-03 11:23:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skywaterblue/pseuds/skywaterblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The best lack all conviction, while the worst<br/>Are full of passionate intensity.</i><br/>--"The Second Coming", Yeats.</p><p>"They're going to try a nuclear blast. We still have control of the launchers in the West. The bunker was built to withstand them, and they think it will melt the ice…"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through White Cloud

Josh comes back early. "They're going to try something else."

She sighs and rubs her exposed arm, before tugging down the sweats. It's always cold down here, and she knows it isn't her imagination. It's cement walls, and cement floors, and one mile below thirty feet of ice. She can hear it cracking and groaning, as it digs into the earth.

She's lost count of the rescue attempts, and refuses to get her hopes up. She isn't talking to him anyhow.

"They're going to try a nuclear blast. We still have control of the launchers in the West. The bunker was built to withstand them, and they think it will melt the ice…"

"So they'll destroy what's left of the environment for everyone else." She can't keep the cold out of her voice. She doesn't know why he's bothering to even go to those meetings. They don't listen to him, and it doesn't matter anyhow. This bunker is their tomb. Twelve thousand years from now, the ice will melt and a nearby tribe will discover their bones. She knows this, like she knows Toby and CJ are dead…

_They're in the car, on the freeway. No one is moving, and people are abandoning pets and suitcases and their cars by the side of the road as they decide to take their chances on foot. It's the moment before, from every bad disaster film in the last twenty years, but they don't see it. You never do when it's your own life._

Toby is being stubborn, he's had the Dart since college, and he doesn't want to leave it. CJ storms out, joining the walkers, and Toby sighs before going out after her. He just makes it to her before the rumbling starts. They have time to turn their heads and reach for each others hands as the wave comes crashing down…

He's explaining about nuclear loads, fallout and the temperature of ice. Facts and figures, he's good at it -- it's very persuasive. If she were really listening, she might believe. She wonders why he saved her. Why her, and not CJ? Or Toby? She's just a burden to them, another mouth sucking oxygen and rations.

She'd probably like him a lot more right now, if he didn't look at her like that when she spoke. If he wasn't so eager and hopeful. When he looks at her, she wishes she didn't get the feeling she was his project. He saved the girl, and so maybe it all worked out; CJ and Toby made it to higher ground, and Sam went down to Mexico and is even as she thinks, helping restore order and law to the refugees.

They'll melt the ice and leave the bunker, and together, fix the world. She could laugh.

"Donna…" He starts, and he sits at the edge of her cot, and squeezes her knee. You killed them both, she thinks, one of them could have had my seat. They died for me. It's irrational, she knows, but it's there. She's said it before anyhow. She's screamed and cried and lost herself. It hasn't changed a thing. She shouldn't be here, they should.

"CJ and Toby are dead, Josh." She wants to hurt him, and she does.

_CJ and Toby are still in the office. They know it's the end, but they have no where else to be. They've taken refuge in CJ's, because she has a nicer couch, but they brought the cigars and scotch. CJ's already half drunk, and she decides to try smoking, because this is the end, and it might be the last first time she does something. She coughs ridiculously and Toby can't stop laughing. He's still laughing when the water comes._

"I… I know. I'm sorry. If I could do it again… I would have saved them if I could have… you know that."

Well, well and well again. It doesn't change a thing, she tells herself. Not a damn thing.

"It's going to be here in half an hour. Maybe less, I left before they did the math."

She sits up. Josh rubs her hand, his fingers feel scalding hot compared to her cold skin. He's still alive. It's a shame she's dying, she thinks. It feels like her soul left her skin the moment she realized what he had done for her. It froze, like the world above, when it left her. Some part of her, a very large part, still wants to live.

She kisses him, hits his nose on the way with her forehead. "My hero," He's confused, but kissing back. Maybe he thinks that was a compliment. This is what he's wanted all along, she thinks. It's why he saved her. She used to dream about knights and white horses, but then she drove away in a Chevrolet and never looked back. Too bad she fell in with someone as deluded.

His mouth is so hot and it tastes like stale black coffee, but she keeps going. If she can just find the source, maybe she can find what keeps him alive, all the time, all these years. But eventually they break for breath, and she's still empty.

She pushes him down and tries again, her chest pressed to his. She can feel the thump thumping of his heart, and the bulge of his erection. He wants her, of course he does. "Donna?" He asks, as she peels off the Presidential issue sweater from his chest. His nipples have gone erect, and little gooseflesh bumps are raising on his arms.

She laughs, high and thin, "You have a better idea on how to spend this time?"

"Uh." It isn't a trick question, Joshua. "I thought you hated me. For saving you."

She thinks she does. She thinks she doesn't. Her body is screaming at her, it wants to live, and she doesn't think she can keep fighting it. The look on his face repulses her, and keeps her going.

"Maybe I do, but you're all I've got." And she kisses him again, gentle this time, like she always wanted to. Before things got in the way, before she froze.

His hands lift up her sweater, and there's a moment of tangled fabric before they're both naked from the waist up. It's colder than she ever could have imagined, and his hands leave trails of warmth as they explore her breasts, then down, until he's pulling past the elastic waistband of her sweats.

She breaks with her kisses to gasp as his fingers finds her clit. She warming up under his touch, she can feel it, and she hates her body, for all of it. She'll give him this, he knows what to do with a girl. He brings her to the brink, and then over, with his mouth playing with her nipples and hands in her pants.

They pull down his pants together, rolling them into a wad which she pushes off the cot with her foot. Some part of her is thinking he should be wearing a condom, and she almost wants to laugh. He's a nice length, and she shifts her hips so he hits just the right spots on the way up. He starts off slow and steady, but she's the one driving, and she speeds it up, faster…

_CJ was always a sexual person, so free, and she didn't want to die alone. She takes Toby with her, and they make it to her condo despite the chill wind and the crowded streets. She offers him one last time, and he accepts. They head for her bedroom, stripping their clothes as they go. As CJ came, she wondered how many other people were ending themselves this way tonight. She curled up next to Toby, and they held each other as the water rose…_

… she comes a second time while still lost in her imagination. Josh follows her right after, and she gets off him, curls up next to him, like CJ. The air feels cold around her, and it's leeching her warmth away already. She wonders how long they have left.

And she isn't sure she wants to be rescued, but she isn't sure she wants to die, either.

And she isn't sure she loves Josh, but she isn't sure she hates him, either.

So she waits.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the "Day After Tomorrow" ficathon, which has escaped into the memory hole of the internet, I fear.
> 
> [](http:)Dreamwidth Comment Archive


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